by GUY DINMORE
Washington’s allies in the Gulf have been strongly criticised in the US state department’s annual report on human trafficking for their failure to combat modern slavery, but positive developments are seen under new interim governments in Tunisia and Egypt.
The 2011 report, released on Monday, puts Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the lowest category, Tier Three. These countries have failed to tackle human trafficking which the UN estimates generates revenues of $32bn a year worldwide, second only to the illegal narcotics trade.
Unicef, a UN agency, estimates that 1.2m children are trafficked each year, often for sexual exploitation. A focus of this year’s state department survey is the need to integrate private companies into the campaign against child exploitation.
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